Meccano Club by Bobby Barry

Bloxham Tapes BT20

Presenting the twentieth release on Bloxham Tapes: ‘Meccano Club’ by BOBBY BARRY.

‘Meccano Club’ was meticulously assembled by BB (also of duo FAR RAINBOW with percussionist Emily Mary Barnett) in 2019 using this idiosyncratic sonic arsenal: electric shaver, three radiators, a kettle, one scouring pad, a pencil and sharpener, a pestle and mortar, two music boxes, plus recordings made in Bắc Kạn, Vietnam; Victoria, Australia; and London, UK.

House-arrest hauntologists and stay-indoors psychogeographers, take note: ’Physics Out Of School Hours’ features the voice of Desmond Briscoe, recorded at his home in 2006. Meanwhile, nocturnal somnambulists, ’Night Falls, Lakeside’…

Contextualising the assemblages… Meccano was a line of model construction kits introduced by Frank Hornby in 1898, using fully functioning gears, axles, wheels and motors. In the early 20th century, Meccano Clubs – for hobbyists to work on projects together and share ideas – spread throughout the UK… Before co-founding the BBC Radiophonic Workshop with Daphne Oram in 1958, Desmond Briscoe was a member of his local Meccano Club whilst attending school in the north of England… May the circuit remain unbroken.

Step into Bobby Barry’s phantasmagoric Room 13, rebuilt by oxide ghosts.

"In all, 'Meccano Club' offers an enticing and satisfying listen, particularly to those sensitive to the appeal of building order in entropic spaces rife with particulate noise and occasionally familiar sounds. Barry’s work is calm, confident, and intelligent, and manages to separate itself from the novel, muddy din of so many contemporary cassette tape projects through its constellation of objects-turned-instruments and curious, documentary-like connections to his inspiration." – I Care If You Listen

"Meccano Club is fun, engaging, rocking, sweet, angry, provoking, i.e. very much pop, all while being lethargic in its choice of a tempo, all while being almost static if not listened to at a proper volume, all while using the very un-pop shimmer as the foundation of its sound. These layers of voices, blasts, cracks of feedback, unpredictable fragments of field recordings, all arrive at precisely the moments and never ever overstay their welcome. They serve as instantly gratifying little dramas, as if they are hooks, collected through numerous pop songs and put together in one overflowing stream. Instead of demanding attention, this music seeks to captivate. There’s a Meccano somewhere, made to be a magical device that lets the room be filled with mysterious sounds." – Tone Glow

Bloxham Tapes. Experimental sounds for an unsound world. Riding the London-Bergen ley line.

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